EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, a surreal moment occurs in the life of Carmelo Anthony. He will be out somewhere, maybe at a dinner or a business gathering, and he will be introduced to a person, perhaps a very capable person, who knows many things about many things, but does not know who Carmelo Anthony is. This seems improbable, given that the 28-year-old Anthony is one of the most public and scrutinized athletes in the media fun-house mirror of New York City, but it does happen. Sometimes the person has a vague idea. Sometimes they recognize just Anthony's first name—Carmelo, yes, it rings a bell—and nothing else. They don't know much about NBA basketball. They don't know much about the New York Knicks.

Photos: Off the Court Style

Click to view slideshow Photography by Terry Richardson

This doesn't insult Anthony. Not at all. This is a relief. Anonymity makes him happy.

"I love having those conversations," Anthony says on a January afternoon. He says this earnestly, as if he's describing a guilty pleasure he wishes he could enjoy more. "Because if there is a connection, it's a natural connection. It's not anything to do with basketball."

These moments do not happen often. Chances are they will be happening less and less. Anthony is deep into his third season in New York, and the Knicks are playing some of their best basketball in more than a decade—the primary reason being Anthony. This is not insignificant news. For most of his 10-season career, Anthony has been regarded as an offensive dynamo—Charles Barkley, the ex-player, TNT analyst and basketball's Simon Cowell, describes Anthony to me as "the best scorer in the NBA"—but there was the maddening suspicion that Anthony left potential on the table, that he lacked the crazy-eyed single-mindedness that separated the very good from the great. Melo was about Melo, too unengaged, perhaps ambivalent, the rap went.

That suspicion is fading. When we meet just after the New Year, the Knicks are in first place in their division, and Anthony has just been named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week. The long hype of Carmelo Anthony in New York City has coalesced into something real, and there's a lightness to his mood.

"This is what I envisioned, coming to New York," he says. "This was on my vision board. I'd sit back and be like, damn, I am going to run out there and be hitting game winners in the Garden in front of fans, getting them riled up. When they're stomping on the floors, yelling 'New York Knicks'—that's a great feeling."

We are sitting on plastic chairs in the empty Knicks practice facility in Tarrytown, New York. Practice is done. We look like a pair of ninth graders waiting out detention after gym class. Anthony is wearing an orange T-shirt and a pair of lightweight sweatpants cut at the calf—a version of basketball capris. He stretches his long legs across the floor.

"I always told friends around me, my family, my teammates, guys in the organization, this process was going to take two and a half to three years," he says. "Just to get everything in order. Get your feet wet. Get used to it. A lot of things have become clearer to me about being in New York."

It did not occur overnight. The Knicks traded half their roster when they brought Anthony from the Denver Nuggets in February 2011, after an exasperating saga that dragged on for months. He returned to the city where he was born, across the Brooklyn Bridge, in the brick apartment towers of Red Hook. Anthony hadn't spent his entire childhood in New York—when he was eight, his family moved to Baltimore, where he ascended into a high school star—but there was enough thread to spin a homecoming narrative. Anthony was introduced at a standing-room-only press conference with his wife, the former MTV personality Alani "La La" Vasquez, and the couple's son, Kiyan, now six. When Anthony walked onto the Madison Square Garden floor as a Knick for the first time, the team played a welcoming video accompanied by the schmaltzy lyrics of the Diddy–Skylar Grey song "Coming Home":

I'm coming home / Tell the world I'm coming home / Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday / I know my kingdom awaits and they've forgiven my mistakes.

That gooey homecoming feeling faded fast. The Knicks were swept out of the play-offs in Anthony's first half-season, and the lockout-shortened 2011–12 season was messier—its peak was a winning streak piloted by the point guard Cinderella, Jeremy Lin, most of which Anthony missed with an injury. The team stumbled upon his return, leading to the resignation of head coach Mike D'Antoni, with whom Anthony had occasionally clashed. The team improved, but Miami drummed New York out of the play-offs in five games. A couple months later, the Knicks declined to sign the beloved Lin. The off-season criticism of the franchise was withering.

But New York is crazy even when things are good. When today's Knicks practice ends, Anthony is swarmed by reporters, eager to hear his comments on the latest absurd distraction. A couple days before, Anthony had been involved in a strange episode in the underbelly of the Garden, where he was spotted by a television camera outside a bus chartered by the Boston Celtics. He was waiting to speak to the Celtic antagonist Kevin Garnett, and it's safe to assume he was not there to ask Garnett out for pomegranate mojitos. Anthony would later claim that during the game Garnett had said "certain things you just don't say to another man," and there was gleeful, junior-high-schoolish speculation about what exactly these "certain things" were. Today Anthony politely deflects the controversy ("me and Kevin, that's handled, that's settled, that's done and over with," he says), but the National Basketball Association overlords do not like Anthony's attempted bus confrontation. Hours later, the league suspends him for one game.

But New York could not have cared less. Melo was becoming one of their own. The city had his back.

THERE IS A PRESUMPTUOUS BELIEF that New York is nirvana for a professional athlete, but a number of high-profile free agents have blown off this nirvana in recent years. The Knicks made a pandering overture to LeBron James—going as far as to make a recruiting film with members of the Sopranos cast—but there's no evidence James took the offer seriously before joining the Miami Heat. Not everyone signs with the Yankees now. The Jets may have a quarterback opening soon, and the gig might be less preferable than putting your face inside a trash bag full of bees.

But New York held an appeal to Anthony and his advisers. "New York City is the capital," says Anthony's manager, Robert "Bay" Frazier, who has known him since his teens. "You can get everything done." Anthony is not in the elite class of superstar endorsers like James or Kobe Bryant—he's more like 1-AA than 1-A— but since leaving Denver his visibility and business has grown. Anthony's current relationships include
Nike
's
Jordan Brand, PowerCoco sports drink and the supplement Isotonix Champion Blend Plus. Frazier says that Anthony just agreed to terms on a deal with Degree deodorant, and he recently became a stakeholder in Haute Time, a luxury publishing company covering timepieces. "I've been a watch guy as long as I can remember," Anthony says. A few nights before, I'd noticed a dazzling timepiece in the cubby above Anthony's Garden locker, its face as big as a baby's fist.

Anthony says he is no longer interested in strict endorsement deals; he prefers partnerships that offer a percentage of ownership. "I've got to have a connection with that company," he says. "An endorsement deal—I just feel like it's a one-off thing. 'Oh pay him to go out there and do a commercial.' After that contract is up, you have no ties with that product. So I go into a deal and say, 'OK, forget the money. Let's be partners.' "

Anthony says his wife is an ideal advisor. The Brooklyn-born Vasquez is the star of her own reality series La La's Full Court Life (Melo makes an occasional appearance), and not long ago started her own line of beauty products. Anthony says that he and Vasquez keep their individual businesses separate ("we have our own entities"), but adds that Vasquez encourages him to look beyond the traditional borders of sports. "She doesn't look at me as an athlete at all," Anthony says. "She's always been the person I can bring something to—that's a no-brainer."

Meanwhile, Carmelo has refined Carmelo. Anthony is among the wave of NBA stars who have prioritized fashion down to idiosyncratic details, migrating away from blankety suits and garish ties to slimmer-fitting Ivy League looks: sweaters, tweeds, thick-rimmed eyeglasses. The Michael Jordan generation may have favored silk and wide lapels, but today's players have gravitated toward smaller boutique designers and oddball accessories: James has sat in the front row at Michael Bastian menswear shows; Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant popularized backpacks over dress shirts; Durant's teammate Russell Westbrook is fond of eyewear that makes him look like a lost member of Weezer. Anthony, who uses a personal stylist, Khalilah Williams-Webb, is part of this trend. "Athletes have become more in tune to the fashion world," he says. Marcus Wainwright of Rag & Bone, who worked with Anthony on a custom tuxedo for the 2012 Met Costume Institute Gala, says the player has a "real sense of personal style and the confidence that goes with that."

Anthony's style upgrade was deliberate. Asani Swann, the director of operations for Anthony's management company, Melo Enterprises Inc., says that when Anthony was still with Denver, he began making a conscious effort to freshen his look. He cut his hair, began wearing suits, bow ties, better shoes and coats. Part of this was prompted by the dress code the NBA instituted in the middle of the last decade, but part of it was also growing up—and trying to alter public perception. "We recognized that Melo had the opportunity as he was changing his look to change how people referred to him," Swann says. Anthony entered the league at 19, after just one season at Syracuse University, and there were the predictable reckless episodes, but there's now a new equilibrium. "He has definitely grown and matured," says Frazier.

Anthony has also gotten better at handling New York. Many athletes who play in the city prefer to live across the river in New Jersey or secluded in leafy suburbs. But Anthony and Vasquez, who were married in 2010 at Cipriani restaurant on 42nd Street, chose to live in Manhattan, not far from the Garden, and they have thrown themselves into city life: There were Carmelo and La La at a Lincoln Center fundraiser for President Obama; at the U.S. Open to see Serena Williams; in the VIP section at a Jay-Z show in Brooklyn. "A lot of athletes are just known for being athletes," Anthony says. "You can come to a place like New York and diversify yourself."

‘"This was on my vision board. To run out there and be hitting game winners, getting the fans riled up. When they're stomping on the floor yelling 'New York Knicks'—that's a great feeling."’

——Carmelo Anthony

"This is where Melo started his life," says Swann. "I think it's just in his blood. It's for some and not for others. It is for him."

Of course New York can also be an exhausting grind: the 24/7 media; the elevation of minor disputes into consuming dramas; the daily back-page judgments of the tabloid newspapers. Anthony endures that frenzy regularly. In January rumors surface that he and Vasquez had been living separately, but soon Vasquez is at Anthony's side when the Knicks play the Detroit Pistons in a regular-season game in London. Another fuss is stirred when Anthony reveals he has been on a two-week fast for "clarity in my life and spiritual reasons," a period that coincided with some lackluster performances. But Anthony deflects the concern with humor—he cracks that the fast may have contributed to his tangle with Garnett—and the news cycle pushes on. There's a sense that Anthony has gotten better at handling the city's volatile rhythms. When he says that last summer was the first time he actually got a chance "to sit back and reflect on the whole experience" of being traded and what it means to play in New York, it sounds like a delayed reaction, but it also appears to be true. The city is a place that will bury you one night, then whip around and defend you the next, and athletes who thrive here grasp this. Anthony is not just playing better for his team—he also understands his town.

A CHAMPIONSHIP would change everything—those brief moments of social anonymity would surely vaporize. A title is Anthony's obvious goal, as it's flummoxed every would-be Knicks savior for the past 40 years. "If he's able to win a championship in New York," says Barkley, "it will take his legend to another level." Walt Frazier, the television analyst of the Knicks and a member of New York's last championship club, in 1972–73, agrees. "In order to authenticate your greatness, you got to have a ring," he says. "Ask Patrick Ewing."

It's probably wise to cool the engine here. The Knicks are vastly improved, but they should at least win a play-off series before anyone starts stockpiling championship confetti in the Garden roof. There's little evidence that New York has the power to withstand a seven-game series with the brilliant James and Miami. These Knicks are old and fitful and still capable of lethargic lapses. But energy has returned to the Garden, and Anthony is being discussed as a contender for the NBA's most valuable player award. Knicks shooting guard
J.R. Smith,
who played with Anthony in Denver, notices new assertiveness in his teammate. "I think he's been more of a leader," he says. "He's just been more vocal."

"Last year I was pretty much on a wild streak, going in and out of clubs and stuff like that, and this year he told me to buckle down," Smith admits. "I'm not so sure a year or two ago he would have told me that."

Anthony has yet to conquer New York, and there's no assurance he will. But there's undeniable change. There's a fight, a commitment, a pronounced confidence. Anthony has been collecting wine, and when I ask him if there's a special bottle that's being held for a championship, he smiles. "There's a couple for those moments." (Yes: He said moments.) You might not find him in the NBA finals this season. But there's a new awareness of what Carmelo Anthony can do. If you ever meet up, you will know exactly who he is.

Corrections & Amplifications In one of the photos in the slideshow accompanying this article, Carmelo Anthony is wearing an IWC Big Pilot's watch ($15,400). An earlier version of the caption said the watch was by Panerai and cost $10,400.

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